She frowned slightly, scanning his face. “Of course I know. But there’s no benefit in obsessing over something I have no control over.” A transparent truth she’d never been able to convince her parents of. “I’ve done everything possible to keep this heart healthy and to prolong its lifespan. Now it’s a waiting game.”
Waiting for her heart to fail. Waiting to get back on the transplant list. Waiting for a donor match. For as far back as she could remember, her life had been a game of wait and see. Even these last—relatively healthy—fifteen years had been marred by a sense of wariness . . . of expectation . . . the certainty that at some point her heart would act up again . . . and the stressful, frightening cycle would start for a third time. Only this time she might not come out the other end alive.
She cut off the cold shadow of fear and focused on the here and now. “It’s best to concentrate on what you can control, not what you can’t.”
She offered the rationale as much for her benefit as his. It never hurt to remind oneself of universal truths.
“What if there were somethin’ you could do, now, to increase your heart’s sustainability?” Rawls asked slowly, back to choosing his words with extreme care.
Just what the heck was he hinting at? Faith studied his shadowed face for clues. “You mean exercise? Diet? Been there, doing that.”
“Nah, I mean—” This time he ran both hands, in tandem, through his hair hard enough that she could hear the rasp of his nails scraping his scalp. “Look, this is gonna sound crazy, so hear me out, okay?”
Intrigued, Faith raised her eyebrows. It cost her nothing to listen. “Okay.”
“I’m guessin’ you haven’t realized this yet, or you would have said somethin’ . . . asked about it . . .” He rolled his shoulders and rocked from foot to foot, looking increasingly uncomfortable. “Kait’s half-Arapaho—son-of-a-bitch!”
He suddenly flinched and jerked his arm hard to the right. Cradling his elbow against his chest, he scowled, his head turning from right to left, as though he were looking for something . . . or someone.
What the heck was wrong with him?
“Are you okay?” she asked, watching him with concern.
“Just a . . . just a cramp in my arm,” he said in a tight voice.
Okay . . . so why don’t I believe him? Besides . . . “What does Kait’s ethnicity have to do with my heart?”
He jerked back to face her, but his gaze continually flitted to the left, toward the cookies.
“If you want one that bad, just take one,” she said.
He growled something nasty under his breath, and she could actually see the struggle between his fixation on the stack of cookies and his willpower. Why was he so determined to resist the craving? He’d eaten her cookies before. After several uncomfortable seconds, he finally wrestled his full attention back to her.
“It’s through her Arapaho blood that she’s able to heal.” He dropped the words slowly and deliberately into the conversation and let them just hang there, echoing in the silent room.
It took a second for his meaning to register. “What did you say? Surely you don’t mean . . .”
He had to be teasing her, but . . . the expression on his face was all too serious. Faith took a cautious step back, which was silly since the kitchen counter still separated them. “Heal?”
“Kait has the ability to heal with her hands. It doesn’t work all the time—maybe thirty percent—but when it does work, she can do some pretty incredible things.”
“Thirty percent of the time . . .” Faith repeated. How convenient.
Apparently Kait’s healing ability came with an escape clause. If the patient wasn’t miraculously healed after Kait’s laying on of hands—well, heck, she’d just claim they fell into the seventy percent that couldn’t be treated. What an ingenious excuse for failing.
Disappointment struck. She’d gotten to know the other woman fairly well over the past five days, even liked her. It burned to find Kait was capable of such dishonesty and callousness. Which just went to show how terrible she was at reading people.
“I know what you’re thinkin’,” Rawls said.
“I sincerely doubt it.” Faith’s response emerged crisper than she’d intended.
“You’re wonderin’ how I—a man of science, a man who went through four years of medical school, and three years of surgical residency—could believe in something as unsubstantiated as metaphysical healing.”
Okay . . . he did know what she was thinking. But that didn’t make him a mind reader, any more than Kait was a “metaphysical healer.” He was just skilled at reading body language and facial expressions. Obviously, Kait was skilled at something else entirely.
“I believe in her ability because I’ve seen her heal people,” he said, his voice flat, certain.
Faith paused, feeling her way carefully. She didn’t want to argue with him—but seriously—metaphysical healing?
Give me a break.